MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE is a rubber-band, pulled ever so tightly to squeeze out every tear and chill out of a viewer with its exasperating tension. Miraculously for writer/director Sean Durkin, the band never breaks under the pressure. It falls limp during some scenes only to pull harder to make up for its shortcomings. It is a highly effective psychological horror film, where the boundaries of the human mind have been distorted and bent to make reality a constant fearful experience.
One of the most terrifying things about human understanding and logic is that anyone can accept physical/ mental abuse and regression on to themselves or others if they truly believe it and convey it is the right thing to do. This affliction is bestowed upon Martha, played by Elizabeth Olsen, who also sees herself as a Marcy May and a Marlene. As our prologue shows us, Martha is retreating from a seemingly cult-based environment in the Catskills, where the women wait after the men to eat and are piled into one room. She heads to town to call up her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) for help, only to start second-guessing her actions, especially after a close call at a diner. Once picked up and transported to the vacation home of Lucy and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy), Martha's phobias and desires begin to heavily impact her current psyche, with her past "memories" at the farm and charged emotions manifesting and streamlined into her daily interactions with family members. Could it be that cult is coming after her or was it all a product of her endless imagination?
The film doesn't keep the balance of reality and memory in check, nor should it. The reason is that nothing can be believed to be the absolute truth. We are in the midst of a damaged mind, incapable of understanding if the horrors seen and experienced by Martha were willingly given to her by the cult and its leader Patrick, or if it is the product of nightmares and voices in her head. The movie even gives you many more options to think and look at it, including the possibility that everything was dreamt up after a long bad relationship with a boyfriend. Even if you suspend your disbelief in any way, that doesn't prevent the film from entering inside you and dropping terror-inducing poetry by Patrick of the beauties of fear and death or making you regret walking around at night, even with the lights on.
Not everything in the script can be original and scary. Though Paulson and Dancy are fine in their roles, it doesn't escape the fact that their characters are specifically designed to pad out the proceedings. Both as a counterpoint to the philosophies of Patrick and patronizing know-it-alls, the two have to be emotionally dull and insensitive in order to provoke Martha into further panic attacks instead of, you know, calling for professional help. When I heard the word "parties" from a conversation between the sisters about why the vacation house is so spacious, I just knew that there would be a misguided party scene later on, which the film does in fact. This first draft exercise of melodrama becomes a bigger annoyance since another horror film this year, DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, also had a British man married to an American woman, a subplot about a house project being taken over by the bank, and another ill-suited party with a unstable family member. At least that film had a portable psychologist come into the plot to judge the main character before the more heated moments.
Harsh as that problem is, it is nearly impossible for it to totally ruin the overall film. There are many very unpleasant experiences and frightening scares to behold, thanks to careful and beautiful cinematography, an editing scheme consisting mainly of long takes, and a chilling soundtrack that alternates between natural sounds to blaring alarms. Durkin even made sure to leave more quieter scares in the background and in some throwaway lines, such as the crosses on the farm and a talk about Patrick's children respectively. Elizabeth Olsen richly deserves her breakthrough performance and acclaim, playing Martha as a broken-down doll and an abyss of abhorrence. John Hawkes gives another fantastic acting accomplishment to the cult leader Patrick, a man who believably has the swagger and charm to woo a woman under his spell.
The key thing that makes this film great and a big deal-breaker for some is its conclusion. I won't spoil it, nor am I able to since it too can be taken any way you choose to see it as. If taken from a straight-forward approach, which most would, it is one hell of a gut punch and chilling to the core. Unfortunately, this idea makes the penultimate scenes before it come off a little goofy when you really think about it. Fridge logic aside, it's still a scary final note.
FINAL REVIEW: 4 / 5
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